Steve May

A Message from our President

With spring at its end and summer finally here, we're already at the halfway point of the year. And it’s a pretty special year for us here at Comosoft: 2019 marks our 25th year making industry-leading marketing production tools. Back in 1994, Comosoft was one of the first companies in the world to tackle the challenges of manual planning and productions workflows, bringing two previously separate entities together: product data and images–the database publishing begins era begins...

Today, Comosoft is at the forefront of digital transformation, helping our customers innovate and optimize their planning and production processes. When systems change, so do roles–something we take very seriously as we help our customers adapt their processes for all sales channels in the quest to reduce time to market.

Since our inception, LAGO has evolved into an end-to-end multichannel marketing solution, from planning to output. Many of the features you know and enjoy today are a result of customer feedback or customizations, which is why we really mean it when we say that none of this would be possible without you, our customers. To all of you, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support over the years. We look forward to serving you for many more to come.

All the best,Randy Evans
President

API Survey: Thanks for your participation!

A couple of months back, we sent out a survey to encourage feedback regarding the LAGO API. The results are in: while there are many different use cases out there, the overwhelming majority of you want us to focus on the image handling capabilities of the API first. This doesn't mean we're not also working on other aspects of the API, but rather prioritizing image handling. More API updates coming in the not too distant future.

The API survey is still open. If you'd still like to register your feedback, let us know and we'll send you a link and a password. We've extended the survey deadline to June 30.

LAGO 5: So Many Reasons to Upgrade!

With enhancements to new features and modules, LAGO 5 has unprecedented power and flexibility. Below you'll find a list of some of what's new in LAGO 5:

LAGO-specific shortcuts in InDesign

LAGO Scripting Enhancements

Enhanced Image Alignment Options in Element Layouts

New Function for Placement Rule Scripting

Search folders in LAGO Proof

Enhanced markup tools in LAGO Proof

PDF Format for Correction Documents

Alpha Channels: Enhanced InDesign integration

Ability to copy element layout category settings in document template

Support for macOS Mojave & Adobe CC2019

For a full list of all the new features in LAGO 5 or if you have any other questions about upgrading to LAGO 5, please email info@comosoft.com to schedule a demo.

Module Spotlight: LAGO Proof

LAGO 5 brings many new features to the table and Proof is no exception. We've been busy adding tons of great new ways to interact with proofs.
As of the latest release, Proof now offers:

Comparison slider for multiple page comparison

Pencil tool for freehand markup

The ability to link correction marks to elements (instead of the page)

The ability to view and store proofs as complete, exportable PDFs

Highlight and strikethrough text markup

​These great new proofing features are only available in LAGO 5. Please email info@comosoft.com to schedule a demo preview.

Need Personalized Content? LAGO DIM to the Rescue!

Our latest module addition, LAGO DIM, enables One-to-One personalized messaging.
Back at the LAGO User Conference, we showed you a pre-release demo of LAGO DIM. Fast forward to current day and we're looking for a "test" site. If you're interested in this type of technology and have a use case in mind, let us know.

Comosoft.com Re-Launch–More to Come in the Months Ahead!

The marketing team at Comosoft has recently completed an extensive makeover of Comosoft.com. if you haven't been there lately, please stop by and check out our new digs! We've added a lot of new content and over the coming months, we'll be adding more module information, case studies, videos and event info. Be sure to check back often for the latest news. We highly value your feedback-please email info@comosoft.com with any website suggestions.

Where in the World is Comosoft?

Comosoft has had an exciting year: we've been very busy onboarding new customers in both the US and EU markets and have several more queued up for the coming months. After we wrap up our latest LAGO implementations in the US, we can safely say that Comosoft owns the retail home improvement landscape, powering retail production for the top three players in this space.

We also recently visited with our friends at Belcorp in Lima, Peru. Belcorp is the largest cosmetics company in South America. We're assisting them with their latest digital transformation project, adding Automated Page building to their production mix.

In addition to onboarding several new clients, we're also busy working on LAGO 5 upgrades. The requests continue to come in and we'd love to help you get this scheduled. If you have any questions regarding the LAGO 5 upgrade process, please email info@comosoft.com.

Welcome to the team!

We'd like to take this opportunity to introduce our latest addition to the Comosoft team, Scott Stafford. Scott comes to us with an extensive history in all the right places. To name a few, Scott is proficient in SQL, JavaScript, Python, Linux shell scripting, XML, and HTML.

In his role of Technical Support Analyst, Scott will be helping our Support Team and Derrick Pitts serve the technical needs of our customers. In his spare time, Scott is a technology enthusiast who enjoys spending time with his family locally here in Allen, TX.

Tips & Tricks: JIRA Dashboards

Did you know that JIRA allows you to create multiple dashboards to help track issues and ticket assignments? Customized dashboards are a great way to organize your JIRA space. You can easily create widgets for lists, graphs or charts, providing a visual way to track everything on one screen.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

With the final weeks of autumn waning and Thanksgiving in the books, the holiday season is upon us–some of you may even have snow on the ground. With holiday production cycles at an end and spring campaigns in planning, we hope LAGO has been good to you and would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for being part of the Comosoft family.

LAGO USER CONFERENCE: PAST & FUTURE

This year's LAGO User Conference @ Big Cedar Lodge was a fantastic event–the days were overflowing with great presentations and lively discussions. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! It was also the first time we've had attendees from our European market, making this a truly international event.

This year's User Conference marks both the end of an era and the beginning of a new one: going forward, the LAGO User Conference will become Blueprint, a part of our yearly event series. Furthermore, we've decided to alternate Blueprint's location between Europe and the US.

Our next event, Port of Thoughts, will take place at the Hotel Hafen in Hamburg on June 6th, 2019. Blueprint will resume in 2020 in Hamburg, and alternate with the US in the years to follow. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

COMOSOFT IN THE MEDIA

This week, in partnership with Multichannel Merchant, Comosoft published a LAGO case study produced with the help of our friends at Bass Pro Shops. A huge thanks goes out to Joe Gies and his crew for helping to make this such an interesting read. Be sure to check it out HERE.

MEET THE TEAM

Some of you have probably already met our latest addition to the team, Mark Jones, at this year's User Conference. Mark comes to us with decades of industry experience and will serve as our Executive Vice President, Strategic Partnerships. Mark is an avid golfer, accomplished drummer and excited to be on board with Comosoft.

Reyn Ansley is the newest member of the support department. Reyn is a long-time user of LAGO and comes to us with years of experience using LAGO in the day-to-day marketing production for a major office supplies distributor. When not at the office, Reyn likes spending time outdoors and playing video games with his 10 year old twins.

Check out this in-depth case study to see how Bass Pro Shops is using Comosoft LAGO
to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their retail marketing operations.

PUBLIC RELEASE: OCTOBER 9!

After many years in the making, LAGO 5 is set for relase on October 9, during our 2018 LAGO User Conference. We've really taken the "5" part of LAGO 5 to heart, transitioning LAGO's Adobe Flash based modules to HTML 5. Along with this major architectural update, we've added many new features too-security enhancements and our first LAGO API just to name two. In the coming weeks, we'll be releasing more LAGO 5 info, so stay tuned!

We're hoping to see as many of you as possible at our upcoming User Conference-we've planned some really interesting sessions, coming from both Comosoft and our customers. For a full breakdown of the conference agenda and conference information, please visit our website.

MEET OUR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT TEAM

Johnny Cochran
Johnny joined our company back in 2011, transitioning from one of our customers to Head of Professional Services. As one of our key staff members, Johnny has played a role in most of our implementations over the past 7 years, helping to turn concepts into LAGO functionality.

Paul Kawano
Paul is our Head of Product Management and has been with us for over 12 years, holding several positions within our company, both in pre-sales and project management. Paul currently works closely with our customers and developers, helping to guide the evolution of LAGO.

Michael Siek
As one of our longest tenured staff members and Head of Software Development, Michael has helped to make LAGO all that is today. Starting as a Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress plugin devloper with Comosoft 18 years ago, Michael now oversees all aspects of LAGO development.